Hundreds of industry experts gathered virtually to discuss the power of community-centered CX.
Hundreds of CX, marketing, product, and insights professionals gathered at this year's virtual Alida Activate event to hear inspiring keynotes and insightful sessions from speakers from Amazon Music, Warner Bros Discovery, PokerStars, and other leading brands.
This year, Alida Activate focused on “The Power of Community-Centered CX”: When advocates of a brand come together in a supportive environment to share feedback, the power of those insights is undeniable.
Speakers emphasized that versatility was a key component to the power of a community. Not only does a community facilitate the smart execution of targeted CX tactics, but it also gives companies the power to gain comprehensive insights into the entire evolution of their customers' experiences. This fully customizable approach to CX opens the door for companies to accomplish their goals faster and on their own terms.
The keynotes
Ross Wainwright, CEO at Alida, and Natasha Hritzuk, VP Global Entertainment Research at Warner Bros. Discovery opened the event by discussing community-centered CX as a driver for impactful business transformation.
“The Alida panel became a vital tool for us to touch base with our core consumer on a regular basis,” said Hritzuk about the 100,000-member strong community. “We built a segmentation that enabled us to use the panel to dig in and understand the subsets at a more nuanced level, not just what they watch, but why they care, and what needs are being served.”
Later, Riaz Raihan, Alida’s President of Products and Engineering, was joined by Gareth Williams, Insight Community Manager at PokerStars, to discuss how Alida's innovation continues to drive revenue and saves costs for PokerStars.
“The primary directive of the research communities is to give our customers decision-making power within our business’ processes and hear them at all stages,” revealed Williams. “One of the benefits of this is increased revenue. The more you listen to customers, the better your strategic decisions are.”
The speakers
In addition to the keynote speeches, Activate attendees heard from industry leaders who showcased the latest in experience management, shared best practices, and dissected emerging trends:
How research communities have evolved over time and the role they play in UX: The global head of Design Research and Beta Amazon Music, Elisa Chan walked attendees through her award-winning path as a UX researcher and how she has used the power of insight communities to fuel her team’s product development process and got through common research roadblocks.
“You could run amazing research and encounter deep findings, but if it doesn’t reach the right people, you’re not completing the cycle and it’s really hard to have buy-in,” stated the Amazon Music executive. “Once the channels and foundation are built, you can start working on the quantity and quality of the output to prove value to the organization.”
Building brand loyalty by connecting with new customers audiences: The research team at Bally Sports has been tasked with bringing viewers closer to the game and simultaneously becoming a trusted voice in a busy market. Research senior director Susie Thomas and senior analyst Renee Martin told us about growing their community from scratch to achieve just that, discovering key brand drivers, and making quick decisions in a fast-paced streaming space.
“While there’s so many resources at the national level, local and regional research are a tough nut to crack,” confessed Renee Martin. “Having our own in-house research panel consisting of our actual customers allows us to have more control over the insights we need and want.”
Tapping into hard-to-reach audiences for better patient experiences: Patient care advocates Karen Langford (Vanderbilt University Medical Center) and Hannah Crain (St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital) have been using Alida Community to bring the patient voice to their organizations so decisions are made based on the needs of patients and their families.
“Part of having a virtual platform is to acknowledge that our patients’ families are busy with life. They can’t be in the hospital telling us what they think all the time,” Hannah Crain admitted. “We needed something that was on their terms and they could reach it out 24/7, whether they had five seconds or a whole hour to talk to us.”
Storytelling: How to maximize the business impact of your research: The Senior VP of Verve, Alex Charlton, explained why simply reporting customer insights wasn't enough. They need to be memorable, moving and galvanizing. Charlton explained what typically goes wrong in the process and how to craft stories that balance structure and emotion.
“A research presentation should take the business on a journey from A to B,” said Charlton. “When planning a project and eventual output, we should always be thinking about the overall business goal the research is meant to be supporting. Once we know where we want to go, how are we going to get there? There lies the real value of research.”
The workshops
On the second day of Activate, Workshop Day, participants got involved in high value, in-depth sessions focused on insights and CX conducted by Alida experts. The workshops slate included:
- A Framework for Value: How do you build a framework that creates alignment around the value of a program? Activate 2023 participants learned how to articulate the business impact of research and establish a roadmap with quantifiable metrics.
- Community Management: Myths and Methods: Attendees were regaled with tips and tricks to get the most of their communities, as well as the best practices and processes that would keep them healthy.
- Unlocking Insights with Dashboards: Activate participants learned how best-in-class CX dashboards looked and how to customize them for every stakeholder, in order to use their analytics to the fullest.
- Unlocking the Power of Qualitative Feedback: This workshop had everything: a breakdown of the potential value of video conversations, questions most likely to get participants going, and best practices to augment newly obtained data.
You can access every single one of these sessions on-demand and discover how the power of community-centered CX can give your business a boost.
Get access to the on-demand sessions of the Alida Activate 2023 North America here: https://www.alida.com/resources/activate-community-centered-cx
